The Controversy Of Paul's Discussion Of Jesus Humanity

Paul’s statement is aimed at addressing the main issue that both Jews and Greeks have a hard time with and that is Jesus’ humanity. The Jews cannot believe that God would take on human flesh and then submit to crucifixion and death because this would be seen as a denial of God’s omnipotence and immutability. The Greeks, on the other hand, could not believe that God would become incarnate because, to them, heaven is the ideal place since that is where all the forms exist. Human life for the Greeks prevents a person from experiencing the forms in all their glory. As we can see, the Greeks and Jews had a hard time wrapping their heads around the condescension of Jesus, and this would eventually lead to all sorts of Christological heresies. They, unfortunately, did not realize, as Gregory of Nyssa states, “that the omnipotence of the divine nature should have had strength to descend to the lowliness of humanity, furnishes a more manifest proof of power than even the greatest and
This idea is centered on the belief that Jesus was begotten by the Father. If Jesus is God like the Father, then there would be two Gods and this would then compromise monotheism because you cannot have two unbegotten Gods coexisting together in monotheism. For Arius, it was easy to think of Jesus as being created because everything comes from God the Father. This means that everything that comes from the Father is inferior to him because he created these things like Jesus. Arius could not see the distinction between “creating” and “begetting” because he thought of receptivity (i.e. begotten) as non-divine. At the Council of Nicaea the word “begotten” is defined as meaning made of the same substance which then leads to the understanding that Jesus is consubstantial with the Father (i.e.